Goodbye Charlie Brown!

Goodbye Charlie Brown!

The hype surrounding millennium problems fizzled.  But the disappointment which met news that Charles Schulz was to publish his last daily strip on January 7th was real:  after almost 50 years of existence, Snoopy made his final daily appearance Monday, Jan. 3, 2000.  (The last Sunday strip will be published on February 13.) All over the world, readers of Peanuts, the comic strip world created by Schulz, expressed their sadness at the demise of characters which – while remaining the same age through all their years – had become ‘real.’  What is it about certain comic strips that attracts such a devoted audience?  In part, some of their popularity may lie in the appeal to familiar messages and narratives.   The Gospel According to Peanuts B.C. and The Family Circus For Better or For Worse

What has Schulz preached in his strip?  The content often has been directly Christian, nowhere so evident than in his creation of A Charlie Brown Christmas, which features a school Christmas pageant, and has Linus narrating the nativity story verbatim from the New Testament book of Luke.  (The television special's soundtrack featuring the Vince Guaraldi Trio has entered a sort of secular canon of Christmas music.)  The direct references are not surprising, coming from a creator who himself has been a Sunday school teacher for the Church of God [Short 1967:28].  But as Short points out, the day-to-day life of the Peanuts gang also indirectly echoed Christian interpretations of sin, suffering, and love.  Snoopy may be seen as a "little Christ" in his unconditional love, Short suggests, as he "takes on Christ's ambivalent work of humbling the exalted and exalting the humble" [Short 1967:103].  Short, using Peanuts to 'break the ice' and begin discussions of Christian life, notes that like other art forms cartooning can function like parables.  (Since his work on Peanuts, Short has gone on to use sci-fi movies and most recently Calvin and Hobbes to preach the Christian message [Ahrens 1997].  He is pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Monticello, Arkansas.)

B.C. and The Family Circus
Peanuts has not been alone in being read in a religious light.  Inspired by Schulz's strip, cartoonist Johnny Hart created B.C. and The Wizard of Id (which he pens in collaboration with Brant Parker).  Hart has been very up-front about his personal religious beliefs -- he's also been a Sunday school teacher --  and has featured strips with Christian messages -- from the title of B.C. to more direct captions.  (In 1996, some newspapers pulled his strips with Christian messages leading up to Easter, and Hart has said that the Los Angeles Times refuses to publish any with a Christian theme.)  In an interview with Monte Wolverton, he speaks about establishing a balance between Christian-themed cartoons and 'secular' ones.  He also says he considers his cartooning a "ministry" [Wolverton 1997].

The Family Circus, created by Bil Keane, is another long-running cartoon which has featured spiritual content, ranging from scenes of dead grandparents as guardian angels, to church attendance by the family and Christmas and Easter stories.  Like Peanuts, B.C. and The Family Circus have recurring characters, none of whom seem to age or change radically, which may influence readers reactions to religious themes.  However, another very popular strip has had its family grow up -- and in some cases die --  right in front of its audience.

For Better or For Worse
Canadian Lynn Johnston has been penning For Better or For Worse since 1979, and enjoys a strong following around the world.  Just how strong is most evident in the letters she has received from readers.  In a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of Media Development, John Ferré , professor of communications at the University of Louisville, explores the way in which audiences deal with portrayals of death in the media.  Using a collection of letters Johnston received following the deaths of her creations Thelma Baird (a neighbour of the core family who died in 1988), family dog Farley (1995), and Grandmother Patterson (1998), he considers the way in which the public react to death of fictional characters.  Ferré uses the stages of grieving set out by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross to discuss the variety of responses Johnston received from readers following the deaths of Baird, Farley and Grandmother [Ferré].

There were a number of readers who simply didn't want to see death in the 'funnies', and chastised Johnston for these storylines:  "If you want to bum us out with tragedy, why don’t you become a reporter," one person wrote.  This response to cartoon death Ferré equates with Kübler-Ross' denial, exemplified by  readers threatening to stop reading the strip, and often hoping For Better or For Worse would be cancelled.  Anger, another one of the stages, was also present in some letters, while other letter-writers turned to bargaining, with creative suggestions for ways to 'resurrect' Farley, or to create an explanation that would leave the dog still standing.  Interestingly, some readers suggested that Johnston include biblical quotations that would suggest that although Farley had departed the earthly life of his comic strip, he would find eternal life with God.

Ferré identified other responses as being in tune with Kübler-Ross' stage of depression, with sympathy cards and letters being sent to Johnston on Farley's death, as well as the occasional contribution to a humane society made in Farley's memory. Yet others exemplified the fifth stage of acceptance, and among them are letters praising Johnston for her incorporation of Christian values, something which is never explicit in the strips themselves (although there have been expressions of an afterlife, with ghosts and angels).  What is so interesting about the letters is the interplay between the reality of the comic strip and that of the readers' lives; some talk of how the death of Farley, for instance, brought back memories of the death of their own pets.  Other letters tell Johnston how her strip influenced -- for better or for worse -- their own handling of the death of a family relative or pet.  In 1996, Johnston published Remembering Farley, a collection of strips involving the dog's life, which is marketed on the official Web site as appealing to those who have had their own pets.  (A twist to the real/unreal life of For Better or For Worse is its offical Web site which features a monthly 'letter' from each of the main characters, and a place for audiences to send and read other people's e-mail messages to the Patterson family.)

Studies such as Ferre's suggest the depth of connection that many feel with the created world of comic strips.  For some readers, "the death sequences in For Better or For Worse became occasions to convey assurance in eternal life," he notes.  What the ending of Peanuts will mean for readers is yet to be realized, although the 'eternal life' offered by syndication, and the tremendous amount of merchandising that surrounds Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy and their friends may make the disappearance of the daily and weekly strips less difficult than that of Johnston's dead characters.

References:

Frank Ahrens.  1997.  "Bringing scripture home,"  Washington Post reprinted in the Toronto Star, June 7, H22.

John P. Ferré.  1999.  "Death and dying in For Better or For Worse," to be published in Media Development.

Robert L. Short.  1967.   The Gospel According to Peanuts.  Richmond, Virginia:  John Knox Press.

Charles Schulz, "Knowing you are not alone," Decision, Vol. IV (Sept. 1963), p. 9 as cited in Short 1967:7.

Monte Wolverton.  July-August 1997.  "At the Hart of B.C."  Plain Truth Ministries Web site.

Joyce Smith is Research Director of Faith and the Media, and specializes in issues at the intersection of news and religion.  She holds English literature, journalism and religious studies degrees from the universities of Toronto, Western Ontario and Natal.

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